Developing and analysing a curriculum map in Occupational- and Environmental Medicine

Ten ways to get a grip on designing and implementing a competency-based medical education training program

BACKGROUND

Globally there is a move to adopt competency-based medical education (CBME) at all levels of the medical training system. Implementation of a complex intervention such as CBME represents a marked paradigm shift involving multiple stakeholders.

METHODS

This article aims to share tips, based on review of the available literature and the authors' experiences, that may help educators implementing CBME to more easily navigate this major undertaking and avoid "black ice" pitfalls that educators may encounter.

RESULTS

Careful planning prior to, during and post implementation will help programs transition successfully to CBME. Involvement of key stakeholders, such as trainees, teaching faculty, residency training committee members, and the program administrator, prior to and throughout implementation of CBME is critical. Careful and selective choice of key design elements including Entrustable Professional Activities, assessments and appropriate use of direct observation will enhance successful uptake of CBME. Pilot testing may help engage faculty and learners and identify logistical issues that may hinder implementation. Academic advisors, use of curriculum maps, and identifying and leveraging local resources may help facilitate implementation. Planned evaluation of CBME is important to ensure choices made during the design and implementation of CBME result in the desired outcomes.

CONCLUSION

Although the transition to CBME is challenging, successful implementation can be facilitated by careful design and strategic planning.

Do they teach what they need to? An analysis of the impact of curriculum mapping on the learning objectives taught in a lecture series in surgery

Introduction: Curriculum mapping shows concordances and differences between the intended and the taught curriculum. To our knowledge, no previous studies describe the effects that this mapping has on the curriculum. The aim of the present study is to map the content of a lecture series in surgery to the National Catalogue of Learning Objectives in Surgery and analyze the effects this mapping has on the content of the following lecture series. Methods: All lecturers in the lecture series were directly observed by a minimum of two reviewers and learning objectives and the level of competence were documented. After the lecture series, the results were visualized within the catalog of learning objectives and were sent to the lecturers. In the following lecture series, learning objectives were documented correspondingly. Results: In the first lecture series, 47% of the learning objectives were taught. After the mapping, the number of learning objectives that were taught increased to 59% (p < 0.001). The increase was found in all surgical disciplines and in all levels of competences without any changes in the average duration of the lectures. Conclusions: The presented method for mapping a curriculum effectively increased the number of taught learning objectives without requiring longer lecture durations.

Chiropractic curriculum mapping and congruence of the evidence for workplace interventions in work-related neck pain

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to provide a best-synthesis summary of the literature for effective workplace health promotion interventions (WHPI) for work-related mechanical neck pain (MNP) and to determine the congruence between knowledge of WHPI for work-related MNP and coverage of MNP in the chiropractic postgraduate program at Macquarie University.

METHODS

A literature review was undertaken to determine effective WHPI for work-related MNP. We searched Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, and PEDro (from 1991 to 2016) for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The PRISMA (2009) 27-item checklist was used to critically appraise included articles. Lectures, tutorials, and assessment tasks within the chiropractic postgraduate program were mapped to the literature review findings and analyzed.

RESULTS

There was moderate-quality evidence for multidimensional WHPI, including aspects of mental and physical functioning, activity performance and modifications, and environmental modifications, to reduce MNP and disability in workers, particularly in the long term. Education on coverage of MNP and effective WHPI for MNP was inadequately covered although congruent with synthesis of current literature. Education on body functions and structures and personal factors were the most commonly covered components.

CONCLUSION

Multidimensional WHPI, focusing on physical, mental, and environmental modifications, appear to reduce self-reported MNP primarily in office workers. There is adequate congruence between the chiropractic postgraduate program at Macquarie University and the published literature on some WHPI. However, there is inadequate coverage on aspects of MNP and effective WHPI for MNP, particularly those focusing on activity and participation and environmental factors.

Curriculum Mapping with Academic Analytics in Medical and Healthcare Education

Background

No universal solution, based on an approved pedagogical approach, exists to parametrically describe, effectively manage, and clearly visualize a higher education institution’s curriculum, including tools for unveiling relationships inside curricular datasets.

Objective

We aim to solve the issue of medical curriculum mapping to improve understanding of the complex structure and content of medical education programs. Our effort is based on the long-term development and implementation of an original web-based platform, which supports an outcomes-based approach to medical and healthcare education and is suitable for repeated updates and adoption to curriculum innovations.

Methods

We adopted data exploration and visualization approaches in the context of medical curriculum innovations in higher education institutions domain. We have developed a robust platform, covering detailed formal metadata specifications down to the level of learning units, interconnections, and learning outcomes, in accordance with Bloom’s taxonomy and direct links to a particular biomedical nomenclature. Furthermore, we used selected modeling techniques and data mining methods to generate academic analytics reports from medical curriculum mapping datasets.

Results

We present a solution that allows users to effectively optimize a curriculum structure that is described with appropriate metadata, such as course attributes, learning units and outcomes, a standardized vocabulary nomenclature, and a tree structure of essential terms. We present a case study implementation that includes effective support for curriculum reengineering efforts of academics through a comprehensive overview of the General Medicine study program. Moreover, we introduce deep content analysis of a dataset that was captured with the use of the curriculum mapping platform; this may assist in detecting any potentially problematic areas, and hence it may help to construct a comprehensive overview for the subsequent global in-depth medical curriculum inspection.

Conclusions

We have proposed, developed, and implemented an original framework for medical and healthcare curriculum innovations and harmonization, including: planning model, mapping model, and selected academic analytics extracted with the use of data mining.

Attitude of medical students towards occupational safety and health: a multi-national study

BACKGROUND

Work-related diseases contribute immensely to the global burden of diseases. Better understanding of attitudes of health care workers towards occupational safety and health (OSH) is important for planning.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the attitude of medical students towards OSH around the globe.

METHODS

A questionnaire assessing the attitude towards OSH was administered to medical and paramedical students of 21 Medical Universities across the globe. In the current study 1895 students, aged 18-36 years, from 17 countries were included. After having performed a principal components analysis, the associations of interest between the identified components and other socio demographic characteristics were assessed by multivariate linear regression.

RESULTS

Principal component analysis revealed 3 components. Students from lower and lower-middle-income countries had a more positive attitude towards OSH, but the importance of OSH was still rated higher by students from upper-income countries. Although students from Asian and African continents showed high interest for OSH, European and South-Central American students comparatively rated importance of OSH to be higher. Paramedical students had more positive attitude towards OSH than medical students.

CONCLUSION

The attitude of students from lower-income and lower-middle-income towards importance of OSH is negative. This attitude could be changed by recommending modifications to OSH courses that reflect the importance of OSH. Since paramedical students showed more interest in OSH than medical students, modifications in existing health care system with major role of paramedics in OSH service delivery is recommended.

Curriculum mapping within an Australian master of chiropractic program: Congruence between published evidence for chiropractic and student assessment tasks

OBJECTIVE

This study sought to determine congruence between student assessment tasks within the master of chiropractic curriculum at Macquarie University and 2 separate but related domains: (1) disorders commonly presenting to chiropractors and (2) musculoskeletal conditions for which there is published evidence that chiropractic treatment is effective.

METHODS

A literature review was undertaken to determine which musculoskeletal disorders commonly present to chiropractors and the conditions for which there is published evidence that chiropractic treatment is effective. These 2 domains were then mapped to the assessment tasks within the curriculum and analyzed. The proportion of time allocated to theory versus skill acquisition was also determined.

RESULTS

Assessment tasks within the curriculum specifically focus on low back pain, neck pain, lower extremity pain, thoracic pain, and adhesive capsulitis. This curriculum mapping demonstrates congruence between the student assessment tasks and published evidence for chiropractic. The assessments also contain an appropriate balance between theory and skills acquisition.

CONCLUSION

There is congruence between the assessment tasks within the curriculum and the 2 domains against which it was mapped. Thus, completion of the curriculum provides training relevant to conditions that commonly present to chiropractors and musculoskeletal conditions for which chiropractic treatment is effective.

Visual analytics in healthcare education: exploring novel ways to analyze and represent big data in undergraduate medical education

Introduction. The big data present in the medical curriculum that informs undergraduate medical education is beyond human abilities to perceive and analyze. The medical curriculum is the main tool used by teachers and directors to plan, design, and deliver teaching and assessment activities and student evaluations in medical education in a continuous effort to improve it. Big data remains largely unexploited for medical education improvement purposes. The emerging research field of visual analytics has the advantage of combining data analysis and manipulation techniques, information and knowledge representation, and human cognitive strength to perceive and recognize visual patterns. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research on the use and benefits of visual analytics in medical education.

Methods. The present study is based on analyzing the data in the medical curriculum of an undergraduate medical program as it concerns teaching activities, assessment methods and learning outcomes in order to explore visual analytics as a tool for finding ways of representing big data from undergraduate medical education for improvement purposes. Cytoscape software was employed to build networks of the identified aspects and visualize them.

Results. After the analysis of the curriculum data, eleven aspects were identified. Further analysis and visualization of the identified aspects with Cytoscape resulted in building an abstract model of the examined data that presented three different approaches; (i) learning outcomes and teaching methods, (ii) examination and learning outcomes, and (iii) teaching methods, learning outcomes, examination results, and gap analysis.

Discussion. This study identified aspects of medical curriculum that play an important role in how medical education is conducted. The implementation of visual analytics revealed three novel ways of representing big data in the undergraduate medical education context. It appears to be a useful tool to explore such data with possible future implications on healthcare education. It also opens a new direction in medical education informatics research.

Can social semantic web techniques foster collaborative curriculum mapping in medicine?

Background

Curriculum mapping, which is aimed at the systematic realignment of the planned, taught, and learned curriculum, is considered a challenging and ongoing effort in medical education. Second-generation curriculum managing systems foster knowledge management processes including curriculum mapping in order to give comprehensive support to learners, teachers, and administrators. The large quantity of custom-built software in this field indicates a shortcoming of available IT tools and standards.

Objective

The project reported here aims at the systematic adoption of techniques and standards of the Social Semantic Web to implement collaborative curriculum mapping for a complete medical model curriculum.

Methods

A semantic MediaWiki (SMW)-based Web application has been introduced as a platform for the elicitation and revision process of the Aachen Catalogue of Learning Objectives (ACLO). The semantic wiki uses a domain model of the curricular context and offers structured (form-based) data entry, multiple views, structured querying, semantic indexing, and commenting for learning objectives (“LOs”). Semantic indexing of learning objectives relies on both a controlled vocabulary of international medical classifications (ICD, MeSH) and a folksonomy maintained by the users. An additional module supporting the global checking of consistency complements the semantic wiki. Statements of the Object Constraint Language define the consistency criteria. We evaluated the application by a scenario-based formative usability study, where the participants solved tasks in the (fictional) context of 7 typical situations and answered a questionnaire containing Likert-scaled items and free-text questions.

Results

At present, ACLO contains roughly 5350 operational (ie, specific and measurable) objectives acquired during the last 25 months. The wiki-based user interface uses 13 online forms for data entry and 4 online forms for flexible searches of LOs, and all the forms are accessible by standard Web browsers. The formative usability study yielded positive results (median rating of 2 (“good”) in all 7 general usability items) and produced valuable qualitative feedback, especially concerning navigation and comprehensibility. Although not asked to, the participants (n=5) detected critical aspects of the curriculum (similar learning objectives addressed repeatedly and missing objectives), thus proving the system’s ability to support curriculum revision.

Conclusions

The SMW-based approach enabled an agile implementation of computer-supported knowledge management. The approach, based on standard Social Semantic Web formats and technology, represents a feasible and effectively applicable compromise between answering to the individual requirements of curriculum management at a particular medical school and using proprietary systems.